Clockwise
It seemed that their pasts intertwined within a clockwise rotation that represented the passage of time itself, right down to the very last tick of the clock, Tsunade saw her past repeated within Team 7. One-shot. T-O
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
As the clock struck the hour, the woman sitting behind the Hokage's desk sat silently, completely lost in thought. Her arm, tilted just ever to the side to allow her head ample support as she rested her chin in her palm. Her elbow, sitting a bit too closely to the edge of the desk, was resting on a paper which practically sent out its own warning signal that it would eventually slip. Her curled fingers brushed her cheek, and her fingernails were close enough for her to see that she needed to push the cuticles back again, and that the bright red paint was beginning to flake ever so slightly near the edges.
She'd have to remember to repaint them later.
Her eyes were clouded not from booze or the rice wine she'd asked Shizune to get her hours ago. In fact, the bottle rested in front of her on the desk, untouched and unopened—the steadfast cork holding testament to that. In her hand, she still held a pen. Over an hour ago, it had been at the ready to sign the document her elbow had taken to resting on, and the ink on the tip had been ready and fresh. But now it just lay lazily within her grip, sometimes rolling to the side from an absent twitch of her hand.
When she was too deep in thought, her body tended to do that. Twitch randomly and almost unnoticeably depending on how close you really were to her at that moment.
Her mind was locked in the memories of her childhood, more specifically, her growing up as a ninja in a team of two other shinobi, and a Jounin sensei. But, as her memories wandered, the thought of her pink haired student flashed through her mind, along with the over-active blonde and sulky Uchiha in Team 7—them and their pervert of a sensei, Hatake Kakashi.
Unknowingly, a smile crossed over her lips at the thought of the Team, and her memories strung each other together as the near silent ticking of the clock continued to echo throughout the silent room. A nostalgic look of serene calmness crossed over her features, and she didn't realize when the pen rolled out of her grasp from another absent twitch in her fingers.
There were so many similarities between her and the way her student was growing up. Both having been the only girl on their teams, and also quite smart to boot…Then there was the overly-cool genius, the younger Uchiha brother still alive, and of course, Orochimaru…There was also the oddball of the group, the Uzumaki boy and Jiriya taking their respective places…and of course, you couldn't forget the perverted sensei both girls had had.
It was definitely one horse-bite to later learn that her own perverted sensei would become the third Hokage, Tsunade mused. But, it wasn't just about the way their teams had been organized that made Haruno Sakura and herself similar. It was the relationships within the Teams. Like Naruto, Jiriya had been one stubborn, over-active, hyped-up idiot who always seemed to be getting into trouble. And Orochimaru was a young genius, just like the Uchiha prodigy, Sasuke. In fact, when she was younger, Tsunade had even been more like Haruno Sakura than she'd wish for anyone to know. She'd been the bright, intelligent, beautiful kunoichi who'd fallen for the quiet genius.
Her eyelids falling halfway over her eyes, the blonde woman's smile faded into a thoughtful grimace. Her memories were piecing back together her childhood thoughts and feelings, emotions and wonders, and she felt herself falling back into her past that she could remember so vividly sometimes, but so vaguely in others.
She had suspected on more than one occasion that the silver-haired pervert liked her more than a teammate, but she was always too busy secretly ogling her dark haired teammate, who always seemed he couldn't truly care less, for her to really act on Jiriya's possible feelings. As kids, Orochimaru had been the beautiful, yet handsome, clever, yet cunning, serious, and mature young man that she'd found so cool at the time. But, the longer they all stayed together and lived with and for each other as a Team—as a family, not only did she find all those things to be true of Orochimaru, but also that that wasn't all that he was.
There always seemed to be much more to him than she could ever really figure out, but his thick outer shell prevented anyone from getting into his heart. Yes, there had been the tight-spots on missions when he'd gone out of his way to come to her rescue, or get hurt in the process of protecting his teammate, and that had always made her heart speed up. But he never really seemed interested.
He wasn't quite the talker, and so as they got older, it became even harder for her to stay close to him. She'd had her secret admiration in her life longer than Sakura was able to keep Sasuke, but the Orochimaru she had wasn't very different from not having him at all. In fact, when Sakura had told Tsunade of Sasuke's desertion, the fifth Hokage hadn't been able to suppress the small; fleeting passing of a thought that if Orochimaru had left the village, if it would have been better for her heart.
The clock ticks, and ticks again as the woman remains engrossed in her thoughts. So much so that she doesn't hear the approaching footsteps of Shizune and the pig, nor notice that the clock had chimed the hour twice within the period of time she'd spent reminiscing in the past, and that the hands were slowly approaching the next hour within the seconds of the next minute.
The older woman made no indication when Shizune opened the door, and continued staring off into space. Nor did she notice Shizune's gasp of surprise and confusion upon finding the sake bottle completely untouched, and she didn't hear Shizune's questioning of whether or not she was feeling well.
But instead, just as was predicted before, her elbow began to slip slowly over the paper, and even more closely to the edge of the desk. In mere milliseconds, Tsunade had fallen from her desk when her elbow slipped, and was now lying on the floor with her chair resting over one leg, and a few of her papers floating down to rest beside her. When Shizune rushed to her side, screaming 'Tsunade-sama!', the dark haired assistant gasped and froze for a moment at seeing the foreign tears falling from the woman's golden eyes.
"Tsunade-sama, were you hurt!?" Shizune cried out loudly, worriedly.
"I-I'm…I'm…f-fine…" the woman began, her face only taking on a deeper look of despair.
But the tears still didn't stop, and that's what frightened Tsunade the most. Along with the fact that her heart was still captured within the memory of her dark haired teammate, and how millennia ago when they were still young teens, he'd kissed her under the stars during a fireworks festival, and how she'd kissed back. Only for none of it to have mattered in the morning when the four of them met for training that next day, for Orochimaru preferred to walk beside Jiriya from then on, no matter how obnoxious the pervert became.
And that had been the worst betrayal of all.
Don't ask me where this came from, and I just want to make it clear I'm kinda bittersweet on this pairing. I hate Orochimaru with all my guts, but just the What-ifs available for him and Tsunade when they were young intrigue me…